2018–2023 United Kingdom higher education strikes

2018 UK higher education strike placards

The University and College Union (UCU), a trade union representing 110,000 staff at UK universities, began a strike on 22 February 2018 as part of an industrial action against 64 universities, represented by Universities UK (UUK). The dispute concerned proposed changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The first wave of strike action escalated over fourteen strike days between 22 February to 20 March, and took place at sixty-four universities across the UK. This was the longest-ever strike in UK higher-education history.

An estimated 42,000 staff went on strike with 575,000 teaching hours being lost. By 28 March, over 700 external examiners had also recorded their resignations in a UCU document.

As of 28 March 2018, more than a million students were estimated to have been affected, with 126,000 students signing petitions calling for fee refunds. Students also occupied campus buildings in support of striking staff at more than a dozen universities.

The action has been called "something of a milestone" for "impending service sector strikes of the 21st century". The Times described the strikes as "the worst industrial action at universities in modern times".

Background to the strike

Non-staff costs as a proportion of universities' total expenditure: UK average 2006-15, rising from around 42% to around 45%, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

UK university pay and student income, 2006-16, inflation-adjusted to 2017 prices. Over the period, total spending per student rises by around £2000; vice-chancellors' remuneration rises by £21873; professors' pay falls by £7544; and average pay across all academic staff falls by £4304.

The United Kingdom has 130 universities. Staff at 68 universities founded before 1992 are members of the USS pension scheme. (Most academic staff at institutions which became universities after 1992 are members of the Teachers' Pension Scheme, which is unaffected by this dispute.) In January 2018, UCU members at 61 universities (initially) balloted in favour of action over the proposed pension changes.

As reporting, both in the UK and abroad, noted, the strikes took place in the context of other tensions over higher education and pension provision in the UK, as follows.

National UK higher education policy

• Debates about tuition fee levels and the mechanisms for paying them. In particular, on 19 February, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May had announced an official review of UK higher education funding.
• The increasingly corporate and privatised character of higher education institutions. For example, universities, whose capital expenditure had traditionally been funded to a significant extent by government funding, were increasingly participating in private capital markets, with new levels of concern for their credit ratings and with uncertain consequences for their finances and governance.
• The creation of the Office for Students on 1 January 2018, whose powers came into force 1 April 2018. For example, on 28 February 2018, the OFS said that "universities that fail to mitigate the impact of the strikes would open themselves up to regulatory intervention".

Pensions

The USS pension scheme

The USS scheme was created in 1974 to provide sector-wide pensions for UK university staff (focusing on academic staff). Its terms changed little until 2011, when major reforms were implemented, followed by further changes in 2014-15. These changes left scheme members markedly worse off: one academic study concluded that the reduced wealth of post-2011 entrants was equivalent to an 11% drop in their total compensation or a 13% drop in their salaries.

By 2017, the USS scheme had over 400,000 members.

Wider UK pensions

• The UK Pensions Act 2004 had placed stringent requirements on private-sector pensions to ensure that their liabilities could be met even if all their member organisations collapsed at once—which in the context of USS would entail the whole University system going bust, an event deemed unlikely by many. In the analysis of Mervyn King and John Kay, 'The 2004 Pensions Act is a prime, but by no means unique, example of well-intentioned but inept financial regulation. Over-prescriptive, it has led to the demise of the defined benefit schemes that it was designed to protect. If proposed changes to the USS are implemented, there will be no defined benefit schemes of any significant size outside the public sector open to new members'.
• Similar or even more dramatic proposed pension cuts for universities' non-academic staff. For example, in January 2018, Southampton University began consultations on closing its defined-benefits pension scheme for non-academic staff, and in March 2018, Staffordshire University began consultations on moving support staff from the defined-benefit local government scheme to a local defined-contribution scheme.
• Worsening outlooks for pension provision across the UK, in the context of rising remuneration for fund managers and increasing integration of pension funds into speculative financial markets. For example, it was noted that pay for USS's chief executive rose from £484,000 in 2017 to £566,000 in 2018, while two staff members earned over £1m, and running costs stood at £125m per annum.

Pay and conditions

• Public concern about rapidly rising pay for University senior management, particularly Vice-chancellors. In particular, on 26 February, the Channel 4 investigative journalism programme Dispatches broadcast an exposé of vice-chancellors' expenses claims.
• Concern among university staff about falling real-terms pay for most staff. Moreover, the pay projections assumed in USS's 2017 valuation and used to argue for reducing pensions assumed an increase in general pay growth: rather than assuming pay would keep up with inflation (as measured by the consumer price index), USS assumed pay growth one percent above inflation (as measured, more generously, by the retail price index). On 16 April 2018, staff were actually offered a payrise of 1.7%, below both CPI inflation (then 2.7%) and RPI (then 3.6%).
• Growing numbers of academic staff were on precarious short-term or zero-hours contracts – 54% in 2016 according to figures from UCU (disputed by employers). In March, UCU argued on the basis of data from a freedom of information request that an average of 27% UK university teaching hours were delivered by such staff. The issue of casualisation became increasingly prominent in UCU members' understanding of the strikes as they developed.
• Casualisation of university staff more widely was also reflected in a strike by cleaners, porters, and receptionists seeking to get their work insourced at the University of London, called during the first wave of UCU strikes for 25–26 April.
• Similar concerns were reflected by strike action around the same time more widely in UK professional classes: junior doctors undertook their first strikes in the history of the National Health Service (England) in 2015-16, while barristers began strike action on 1 April 2018.

Ballot concerning joint higher education trade union national pay claim

Concern about pay and conditions, particularly in relation to high senior pay and expenditure on new buildings in the face of declining staff pay, the gender pay gap, precarious contracts and casualisation, and workloads were all expressed as part of the wider context of the pensions dispute, but also formed the basis of ballots for industrial action across all UK higher education unions: UNISON, Unite, EIS, GMB and UCU. Citing long-term real-terms declining pay, the unions submitted a pay claim seeking a 7.5 per cent pay increase or £1,500, whichever was greater; a £10 minimum wage to make all higher education institutions "living wage" employers; and gender pay equality by 2020. In April 2018, the Universities and Colleges Employers Association proposed a 1.7% pay increase for 2018-19, raising the offer to 2% (and 2.8% for the lowest paid) in May. These figures were both below inflation, which in March 2018 stood at 2.7%. The ballots commenced in September 2018, running alongside the ongoing pensions dispute.

Negotiations regarding pension proposals

Prior to industrial action

In July 2017, USS reported a technical deficit (i.e. a gap between the fund's assets and its liabilities) of £17.5 billion, reported as the largest such shortfall in the UK at that time. USS's deficit evaluation was based on suggestions that although the fund's assets had grown (reaching £60 billion, a one-fifth increase on the previous year), its liabilities had also grown (reaching £78 billion, a one-third increase over the previous year). Following negotiations regarding the calculation of the deficit, the USS Joint Negotiating Committee accepted a technical deficit of £6.1 billion in November 2017.

The key change proposed by UUK was to close USS's defined benefit scheme (possibly temporarily), replacing it with a defined contribution scheme.

Specifically, the USS Joint Negotiating Committee therefore made the following proposals, to be introduced after 1 April 2019:

• Closing of the defined benefits section of the scheme (though mentioning the possibility of reintroducing it), with all future benefits (apart from death in service and ill health retirement benefits) being transferred to the defined contribution scheme.
• Contributions would remain 8% for members and 18% for employers (of which 13.25% contributes directly to pensions, the rest being used for management and running costs, etc.).
• Members would be enabled to pay only 4% while still receiving the usual employer contribution, while the option of paying an extra 1%, matched by the employer, would be removed.
• Members' 8% (or 4%) would include a contribution to partly finance death in service and ill health retirement benefits.

The closure of defined benefits was presented as a red line by UCU, which argued in favour of finding ways to sustain defined benefits, or to introduce a collective defined contribution scheme (the primary legislation for which was introduced in the UK in 2015, but which had not as of March 2018 been advanced to secondary legislation).

Arguments for the changes

USS argued that market conditions had simply proven less favourable than previous valuations had assumed, with the chief executive, Bill Galvin, arguing that 'the unavoidable fact is that market conditions have changed since 2014. Real interest rates have fallen since 2014, relative to inflation, and asset prices have soared ... We are now having to pay more – to get less in return – than we expected in the past'. Moreover, USS emphasised that its room for manoeuvre was constrained by the Pensions Regulator.

In theory, the deficit could have been resolved through higher contribution rates. However, UUK argued that defined benefit schemes were becoming prohibitively expensive. They said they had a legal duty to put in place a credible plan to reduce the deficit by the summer of 2018. Otherwise, pension contributions from employers and staff would have to sharply increase, potentially resulting in redundancies and cuts to other areas of teaching, research and student support. UUK stated the defined contributions proposal would compare well with private-sector competitors, with employer contributions double the private sector average.

USS had a legal responsibility to satisfy the UK pensions regulator that the scheme was sound, and the regulator was requiring change.

Arguments against the changes

UCU stated that UUK's proposal would "leave a typical lecturer almost £10,000 a year worse off in retirement than under the current set-up", with younger staff the worst affected, with some losing up to half their anticipated pensions.

Critics of the changes offered the following main arguments against implementing the changes to the scheme promoted by UUK.

• UUK's assessment of the health of the higher education sector after a 2015/16 report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) found the sector was financially sound. Independent analyses undertaken by University of Warwick economist Dennis Leech and UCL academic Sean Wallis argued that UUK used a "flawed valuation model".
• The proposed USS changes were shaped by the demand of the UK pensions regulator that USS should be made less risky to employers than USS's actuaries had wished. It was argued, however, that in view of the exceptional economic circumstances associated with the Bank of England's quantitative easing from 2009, the regulator was placing unrealistic expectations on UK pensions nationally.
• Concern also grew, on the basis of research by Michael Otsuka from the London School of Economics, that UUK's negotiating position was disproportionately influenced by the views of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, whose constituent colleges made separate submissions to consultations.
• Current employees were annually paying £2.1bn into the USS fund, while it was annually paying out £1.8bn to pensioners. To cover the current annual cost of pensions from investment returns, the fund required a net annual return of 3%. One of the assumptions used in the July 2017 valuation was that the fund would stop accepting contributions — the sort of situation that would normally arise if the companies in a pension scheme went busy, which was an unlikely real-world situation for the UK higher education sector. USS's analyses showed that, assuming the most likely circumstances rather than the most challenging circumstances (technically referred to as the "best estimate"), the pension scheme was sustainable in the long-term. In contrast to technical deficits based on stringently conservative assumptions, this more probable valuation showed the fund in credit by £8.3 billion.
• At the inception of USS, employer contributions were 16% of salary, rising to 18.55% in 1983. However, from January 1997 to September 2009 they were decreased to 14% (before rising to 16% from October 2009 to 2016 and 18% thereafter). It was suggested that staff were bearing the consequences of an earlier lack of investment by employers.

UCU ballots for industrial action (29 January)

On 29 January, UCU announced that 88% of UCU members had voted to back strike action and 93% backed action short of a strike. The turnout was 58%, meeting the 50% minimum set by the Trade Union Act 2016.

Shortly after, on 13 February, the trade union UNISON, many of whose members in the Higher Education sector were also USS members, began a consultative ballot on striking alongside UCU. On 20 February, UNISON wrote to vice-chancellors in support of UCU's position.

Strike action commences (23 February) and new negotiations follow

International Women's Day and Leeds UCU signs, 2018

Strikes commenced on 23 February, whereupon UUK agreed to meet UCU for further negotiations on 27 February. Leaked emails suggested they would not negotiate on UCU's key issue, retaining defined benefits. The meeting led to an agreement to undergo conciliation through Acas, the UK's national industrial dispute conciliation body. UCU tabled and published a set of proposals which it argued was consistent with the majority of UUK members' positions in USS's earlier consultation, but strikes were not called off.

A spokesperson for Universities UK said: "Both sides are currently engaged in serious and constructive talks at Acas. We are committed to seeking a viable, affordable and mutually acceptable solution to the current challenges facing USS pensions."

UCU's proposal (27 February)

UCU tabled an alternative proposal at the first round of talks with UUK which UCU stated would involve universities accepting some increased risk and small increased contributions from employers and scheme members. UUK's response was that they would need time to cost the union's proposal which it feared would require "very substantial increases in contributions". However, some vice-chancellors voiced support for UCU's plan.

UCU's proposal, along with suggestions for longer-term strategies, was:

• Universities should accept a slightly riskier but probably more lucrative investment strategy, leading to a deficit of £5.1bn rather than £6.1bn, a level accepted by the majority of institutions when it was proposed by USS in September 2017.
• Retaining defined benefits on salaries up to £55,550.
• Reducing the annual accrual rate reduced from 1/75^th to 1/80^th.
• Increasing contributions by 2.7% for employers and 1.4% for members (i.e. 4.1% split 65/35 between employers and employees).

The parties held inconclusive talks on 5 March, scheduling the next talks for 7 March. However, a bizarre Twitter spasm from UUK on the night of 5 March insisted that the group was available for talks on 6 March, and this led to talks at noon on 6 March. Talks continued on 7 March, inconclusively. On 8 March, UCU's Higher Education Committee agreed that it would call further strikes if necessary after the Easter vacation, between April and June.

Joint UUK and UCU proposal (12 March)

Placard from 13 March 2018 UCU protest, Leeds.

On the evening of Monday 12 March UCU and UUK issued a joint agreement, arrived at through ACAS, to be put to their respective members.

The agreement was specifically for a three-year "transitional benefit arrangement" lasting from 1 April 2019, maintaining defined benefits up to a salary threshold of £42,000, reducing the accrual rate to 1/85, but raising contributions to 19.3% of salaries for employers and 8.7% for members. The next valuation was to be informed by an "independent expert group", 'aiming to promote greater transparency and understanding' of the methodologies, assumptions, and viability of the scheme. Indexation and revaluation was to be measured using CPI and capped at up to 2.5% p.a. (meaning that if inflation, measured by CPI, rose above 2.5%, the pension would lose value in real terms). UCU was to suspend industrial action and "encourage" branches to re-schedule any classes disrupted by the strike. The agreement stated that "there is commitment between both sides to engage in meaningful discussions as soon as possible to explore risk sharing alternatives for the future from 2020, in particular Collective Defined Contributions".

Vice-chancellors were to inform UUK whether they would back this deal by the end of day on Wednesday 14 March while UCU representatives consulted with their members on whether to reject the deal or not the next day.

Acas agreement withdrawn by UCU (13 March)

UCU meeting at the University of Edinburgh

Local branch meetings were held on Tuesday 13 March to consider the ACAS agreement. These meetings informed a meeting of elected and branch representatives the same day. This agreement was rejected by UCU's membership on the grounds that it failed to address members' concerns. Many UCU members used the Twitter hashtag #NoCapitulation to express their disapproval of the agreement, helping to co-ordinate a strong response to the proposals.

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said that preparations for strikes during the exam period would be made, while urgently seeking further talks.

A UUK spokesperson said:

It is hugely disappointing that students' education will be further disrupted through continued strike action. We have engaged extensively with UCU negotiators to find a mutually acceptable way forward.

In some places, the decision was followed the next day by rallies.

Developments 14-23 March

As of 14 March, UUK's consultation with its members remained ongoing.

A statutory 64-day consultation by USS on pension changes had been due to commence on 19 March, but as of 15 March, USS were declaring an unspecified delay to the commencement of consultations.

On 16 March, UCU called on members employed as external examiners to resign until the dispute was resolved. By 23 March over 600 resignations had occurred.

On 18 March, UUK announced that it would convene an "independent panel", featuring an independent chair and involving academics and pension professionals, to "consider issues of methodology, assumptions and monitoring, aiming to promote greater transparency and understanding of the USS valuation". The panel would invite UCU "to play a full role in providing evidence to the panel" and would also liaise with USS and the pensions regulator. UCU's response was that "UCU will of course look at any proposals UUK makes but our members have made it quite clear that what is needed is a much improved offer".

On 22 March, UCU sanctioned fourteen further strike days to fall in the April to June 2018 exam period should the talks fail to come to a resolution.

On 23 March, UNISON announced that its consultative ballot of its USS members had returned 91% support for industrial action, and that it would begin a formal ballot for strike action in April.

UUK makes a new offer (23 March)

On 23 March, UCU announced a new offer from UUK. This proposed the creation of a formal "Joint Expert Panel" to reconsider how valuations should be undertaken, leaving open the possibility of maintaining the status quo not only for the statutory period up to April 2019, but possibly beyond. The panel would

take into account the unique nature of the HE sector, inter-generational fairness and equality considerations, the need to strike a fair balance between ensuring stability and risk. Recognising that staff highly value Defined Benefit provision, the work of the group will reflect the clear wish of staff to have a guaranteed pension comparable with current provision whilst meeting the affordability challenges for all parties, within the current regulatory framework.

The Financial Times noted that this would be "a far more comprehensive review of the current structure and valuation of the Universities Superannuation Scheme" than previously considered, but also noted that "the new agreement avoids any mention of increases in contributions by either employers or employees to plug the hole in the scheme". UCU was due to consult members' representatives at a formal meeting on 28 March.

Meanwhile, on 26 March, the UK's Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff began its round of negotiations for pay in the sector for 2018/19, with unions demanding a large pay uplift.

New strike dates announced as UCU members balloted on proposal (28 March)

UCU announced that members would be electronically balloted on the new offer in April to decide on the proposal for the Joint Expert Panel. UUK pledged to maintain the current contributions and retirement benefits until at least April 2019 while the review by the panel of experts took place.

At the same time, UCU gave formal notice of a five-day strike action, aimed at disrupting the exams and assessments period, at some universities for 16 April to 20 April 2018, potentially to be called off if there was progress in the negotiations. 13 universities including Manchester, Cardiff, Oxford, St Andrews, Leeds and Southampton would be affected by this next round of strikes with the prospect of industrial action at the other 52 universities to take place later in April and continuing into July if no agreement was reached. However, staff would not take part in additional strike action if UCU members vote to accept the UUK proposal.

As of 28 March, nearly 700 external examiners had recorded their resignations in a UCU document. The Guardian reported that "students at the end of their courses could find themselves unable to graduate if crucial exams cannot be invigilated, marked or assessed" as a worst-case scenario.

Debate followed among UCU members as to whether to accept the proposals or not. As of 4 April, some branches had decided to recommend that their members reject the proposals as they stood, and prominent discontent with the proposals continued to be registered in the run-up to the ballot closing.

UCU accepts UUK proposal (13 April) and Joint Expert Panel is formed

The result of the ballot was the UCU members accepted UUK proposal. Industrial action was suspended and the impending strikes of 16 April were called off.

Total balloted	53,415
Total votes cast	33,973
Total number valid votes	33,913
Turnout	63.5%
Yes to accept the UUK offer	21,683 (64%)
No to reject the UUK offer	12,230 (36%)

On 18 April, UCU confirmed that it was ending its call for external examiners to stand down. Commentary suggested that scrutiny of the pension negotiations by the union membership was nonetheless ongoing.

On 18 May, UUK and UCU announced that the Joint Expert Panel would be chaired by Joanne Segars. On 21 May UCU announced three nominations to the panel. Other members were later determined as Ronnie Bowie, Sally Bridgeland, and Chris Curry (appointed by UUK) and Catherine Donnelly, Saul Jacka, and Deborah Mabbett (appointed by UCU). The Joint Expert Panel was scheduled to report in September.

On 1-3 June, a tumultuous UCU congress included calls for the general secretary, Sally Hunt, to resign over what was perceived to be undemocratic practice within the Union's prosecution of the dispute. Much of the congress's proceedings had to be aborted, and a new congress was proposed for the future.

On 6 June, UCU commenced a consultative ballot to determine whether to conduct a formal ballot for industrial action in relation to the UK Joint Negotiating Committee for Higher Education Staff's negotiations over 2018-19 pay. The ballot closed on 27 June 2018, with 82% of participating members voting to reject the offer from the University and Colleges Employers’ Association of a minimum pay rise of 2 per cent, rising to 2.8 per cent for the lowest paid. UCU formally declared a trade dispute on 24 July 2018.

USS plans contribution increases (25 July)

While the Joint Expert Panel deliberated, USS announced that, given that the legal deadline for addressing the fund's deficit had passed, it would, in accordance with statutory procedure, act already to raise both staff and employer contributions, following a statutory consultation period, to maintain the scheme's benefits. The proposed rises (as a percentage of salary) were to be phased in over a year:

	Staff contributions	Employer contributions
status quo	8%	18%
April 2019	8.8%	19.5%
October 2019	10.4%	22.5%
April 2020	11.7%	24.9%

These plans were announced against a backdrop of USS's annual report calculations of the deficit falling, due to changing assumptions about factors such as returns on corporate bonds and mortality. On different measures, the 2018 annual report showed a 2014 deficit of 12.6bn falling to a 2018 deficit of 12.1bn; or a £17.5bn deficit falling to £8.4 billion deficit.

On 21 August, UCU served statutory notice of its intention to ballot members for industrial action regarding the 2018-19 national pay dispute. The ballot opened on 30 August.

Joint Expert Panel releases first report (13 September)

On 13 September, the Joint Expert Panel that had been convened to re-examine the valuation of the USS scheme issued its first report. The Panel's press release recommended a number of adjustments to the methodology and data used in the 2017 valuation of the USS scheme, and stated that "it is the Panel’s belief, based on independent actuarial analysis, that the full implementation of these adjustments could mean total required contributions estimated at 29.2% to fund current benefits [...] This compares to the current rate of 26% (18% of salary paid by employers, 8% by employees) and the rate of 36.6% from April 2020 which is proposed by USS, based on the valuation as it stands". It was suggested that this proposal might entail raising employees' contributions to 9.1% of salary, and employers' by 2.1%, taking their contribution to 20.1%.

Responses to the strikes

Crowds gather at a UCU strike rally in George Square, Glasgow.

Changes in UK law

The strike brought to the attention of unions and the UK government a potential ambiguity in UK legislation: migrant workers on Tier 2 and 5 visas have an annual 20-day limit on unpaid absence from work. As some universities had seen local strike action during 2017-18 in addition to the 14 days of national strike action, fears arose that staff members who were on strike for more than 20 days in a year might have their visas revoked, and that this might in turn impinge on their legal rights to take industrial action. On 12 July, the home secretary Sajid Javid declared that it was "not the government’s policy to prevent migrant workers from engaging in legal strike action" and that he would introduce changes to the rules and guidelines on immigration to be explicit that strike action did not count as "unpaid absence".

Staff

Dinosaur of Solidarity lino print, alluding to the presence of a dinosaur on Southampton UCU's picket lines.

In the ballot for the strike, UCU achieved an unusually high turnout and strong support for industrial action, and membership grew by about 15,000 between the beginning of 2018 and 12 April.

Staff organised "teach-outs" off campus at "every university with a substantial picket line"; these featured education sessions which tended to be left-wing or critical of recent changes in UK higher education, apparently led by the University of Leeds, whose UCU branch had tested the model during a local dispute in autumn 2017. Some pickets also featured staff singing rewrites of popular songs, among them Leeds University UCU's Strike Up Your Life (based on the Spice Girls' hit Spice Up Your Life) or dance routines, prominently including Cambridge University UCU's performance to Public Enemy's Fight the Power. Meanwhile, Southampton University UCU's 'Dinosaur of Solidarity', a person in a dinosaur costume, became a minor social-media sensation.

As the strikes commenced, academics at Oxford and Cambridge began using those universities' democratic structures to change the universities' position on pension reform. Oxford staff's attempts to use the university's supreme governing body, Congregation, to effect a change of policy failed due to procedural problems on 5 March, but the next day Oxford's vice-chancellor Louise Richardson declared that the University would nonetheless heed the wishes of staff to "reverse its response to the UUK survey".

As the strikes developed, university staff increasingly called into question the governance structures of UUK, individual universities, and USS, along with the marketisation of the UK higher education sector and its increasingly precarious workforce. By 13 April, over 12,000 people had signed a petition calling for UUK to be made subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Staff also made extensive use of social media (see below).

Universities

Universities were represented in the dispute by UUK.

However, some vice-chancellors expressed support for UCU's position before the strike. Anthony Forster, vice-chancellor at the University of Essex, described a staff consultation process that led Essex to support retaining defined benefits via increased pension contributions. The University of Warwick's Stuart Croft publicly stated that "I am sure that I am not alone in being mystified at this [proposed] change", and argued, in line with the position of the Liberal Democrats, that the UK government should underwrite USS pensions.

After the strike began, other vice chancellors voiced concern about UUK's position, and by the second day of strike action, 18 were being reported as calling for renewed negotiations, or as supporting UCU's position. Some joined staff on picket lines, among them Anton Muscatelli (Glasgow), Keith Burnett (Sheffield) and Robert Allison (Loughborough). In a letter to The Times of 16 March, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, Stephen Toope, expressed sympathy with the concerns of staff and students about not only pensions, but also marketisation of UK universities, and held a wide-ranging public meeting with around 550 staff and students in Great St Mary's Church, scheduling a further such meeting for 26 April.

Conversely, many universities demanded that staff reschedule teaching that had not been delivered during the strike, noting their right to deduct pay for partial performance if staff did not. However, a smaller number appeared to be committed to implementing deductions. Examples which attracted media attention included:

University	Threatened deduction
University of St Andrews	100%
University of Sheffield	25%
University of Kent	50% per breach of contract
University of Leeds	25%
Keele University	20%

In Sheffield's case, pay deduction of 25% for partial performance, rising to 100% after five days, was initially threatened, provoking alumni to threaten to withdraw donations. The University then explained that it would not implement deductions for partial performance. Similar developments occurred at St Andrews, with the Principal, Sally Mapstone, writing that "having considered all matters in the round, I believe that our current policy to deduct pay at 100% for failure to reschedule classes cancelled due to strike action is inconsistent with this University's values and the store we place on our shared sense of community". At Leeds, a number of external examiners resigned in protest at the university's plans, ongoing as of 10 March, to deduct pay for partial performance, while Alice Goodman, widow of the university's noted professor Geoffrey Hill, addressed an open letter to the university's vice chancellor asking the University to reconsider its stance.

Video recording of lectures had become widespread in UK universities by 2016, and some universities sought to use lectures recorded in previous years to substitute for teaching missed during the strikes. This prompted renewed debates about what rights universities should claim in the intellectual output of their staff.

Students

Leeds University students supporting the 2018 USS Pension Strikes on International Women's Day

Polls

A Yougov poll of 738 undergraduate students conducted for UCU between 13 and 20 February 2018 found that nationally, 61% of students said they supported the strikes, with 19% opposed and the remainder unsure. At striking institutions, support was 66%, with 18% opposed. In February 2018, a poll of 1,500 students for Times Higher Education magazine found over half (51.8%) would support their lecturer in a walk-out and just under a third (29.3%) would not. Support for the national strike was evenly balanced, with 38.4% in favour and 38.4% against.

By 8 March, extensive student support for the strikes was still being reported, observing that students were joining with staff in solidarity against the marketisation of UK higher education.

Compensation

Students, who in England had since 2012 paid fees covering most of the cost of their education, responded by demanding compensation from their universities, explicitly in support of the striking staff: by 20 February, 70,000 had signed letters and petitions of this kind, rising to around 126,000 by 5 March.

On 4 March 2018, it was reported that King's College London had become the first university to offer to use money not spent on striking staff's salaries to compensate students. Robert Liow, a third year law student at the university, told the BBC that if universities did not refund students part of their fees, they would be profiting from the dispute, as they would gain the money not paid to striking university staff:

I don't want a consumerist education service. I believe education is a public good and not a service to be sold. But if we are going to be treated as consumers we are going to ask for our money back.

On 23 March, it was reported that the international disputes lawyers Asserson had begun co-ordinating a no-win no-fee suit for compensation for students affected by the strikes, inviting students to sign up to participate via https://www.universitycompensation.co.uk/. On 24 April, it was announced that over 1,000 students had signed up: enough to apply for a group litigation order. By 17 June, over 5,000 had joined. Asserson estimated that one million students had been affected by the strike, with 575,000 teaching hours lost. They suggested that universites might be liable for £20m compensation.

Occupations and other activism

On the first day of the strikes the UUK head office in London was occupied by students. Students undertook occupations of university buildings in support of the strike at various institutions, including University College London (26 February), the University of Liverpool (28 February) and the University of Bristol (5 March), along with students at Leicester, Bath, Exeter, Southampton, Sussex, and Reading. A fresh wave of occupations began on 12 March, following the publication of the first ACAS-brokered joint agreement between UCU and UUK, which UCU members rejected. Universities with occupations during that week included Reading, Cambridge (in the Old Schools), Dundee, York (in Heslington Hall), Sheffield (in the Arts Tower), Stirling, Aberdeen, Surrey, Sussex, and Glasgow.

The purpose of the occupations extended into other issues: on 19 March, University of London students occupied Senate House in support of a strike called for 25-26 April by outsourced worked including cleaners, porters and receptionists. At one point during the occupation, students were locked into a room by staff members of the university.

In the wake of the February-March strikes, the students' union at SOAS called on its members to refuse to submit work with deadlines before 23 March, arguing that deadlines so soon after the end of the strikes would negatively affect students' work.

Politicians

On 29 November 2017, Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party) tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons entitled "Defending Academic Pensions", noting "with concern the proposal by Universities UK to close the defined benefit portion of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) to all future service". The motion was sponsored by Caroline Lucas (Green Party), Martyn Day and Pete Wishart (SNP), and Jim Cunningham, and Mary Glindon (Labour). As of 19 March, it had been signed by 133 MPs.

During the first week of industrial action, UCU's stance was explicitly supported by the Labour and Green Parties. The Liberal Democrats argued that the government should underwrite the USS pension scheme, easing its assessment of risk. The Conservative universities minister Sam Gyimah encouraged the parties to negotiate, and encouraged universities to compensate students for missed education.

The Chinese embassy in the UK also made representations to the Department for Education, expressing concern for the situation of Chinese students in the UK.

Scholarly societies

Some scholarly societies issued statements supporting the strike, among them History UK, which said it 'believes universities should try to maintain the conditions of employment under which academics were originally employed. That includes pensions.' Others did not take a position but did publicly discuss the issues, among them the British Psychological Society.

Media

Traditional media

The action attracted national television coverage, and supportive editorials from newspapers including the Observer and the Financial Times, which opined that "the universities must increase their pensions offer, and lecturers should give a fair hearing to any new proposals. Failing that, students should be compensated by the colleges". Support for UUK, meanwhile, was offered in The Times, with Daniel Finkelstein, for example, arguing that "the pension fund is a pot of money shared between current and past staff. All that the trustees and the regulator are trying to do is to make sure it is fairly shared out. They are ensuring the money hasn't all been given away while there are people with future claims against it".

A number of commentators expressed exasperation at a tendency in the media, and on social media, to refer to the strike as a "lecturers' strike", when it involved a wide range of staff, academic and non-academic.

Social media

UCU members made extensive use of social media during the dispute. They were used to disseminate activists' research on the changes to pensions. Social media were also used to satirise universities' senior management: for example, the hashtag #FindMyProvost was used to mock vice-chancellors who did not engage with staff. They were also a powerful organising tool. A prominent example was the Twitter hashtag #NoCapitulation, which emerged as the unifying message university staff rallied behind twenty hours after the Acas agreement of 12 March. Dr Ed Rooksby, a tutor at Ruskin College Oxford said "The leadership saw this wave of hostility coming towards them and backed down," he says. "I'm sure there wouldn't have been as much momentum without Twitter, and without someone coming up with that hashtag." Dr. Jo Grady, a senior lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield University, stated her belief that Twitter had helped people connect "outside of traditional union frameworks" and that this was ironic as their employers were the ones who encouraged staff to use social media as a tool for self-promotion.

See also

• 2013 UK higher education strike

External links

• Djuna Thurley, "Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS)", House of Commons Library, briefing paper CBP-8156 (20 February 2018).
• Peter Hill, Narrative of a Strike.
• Leon Rocha, 'The House of Mirth' (Twitter docu-thread).
• USS Briefs